


i drowned myself (in your holy water)

by heartshapedcandy



Category: Power Rangers (2017)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-15
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-11-01 05:29:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10915284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartshapedcandy/pseuds/heartshapedcandy
Summary: neither know why it started, but they know whenora soft kimberly and trini fic





	i drowned myself (in your holy water)

If you ask Kimberly, it started at dawn.

She finds Trini at the quarry before sunrise, face tilted against the pearly gray sky, poised at the crest of jagged rock. She is a masterpiece in silhouette, harsh edges smoothed by cool shadow, baggy pants hanging low on curvy hips.

“Hey,” Kimberly says, voice low, hesitant to disturb the quiet. “Been here long?”

Trini turns toward her, shedding shadow as she steps off the ridge. Her face is suddenly cast in the first rays of morning light, dew catching crystal bright on the toes of chunky, repurposed army boots.

“Just since six,” Trini answers shrugging. “You’re right on time.” She reaches Kimberly all at once, stretching out to tug at the hem of Kimberly’s sweatshirt. “Pink. Cute.”

Kimberly reaches out to box at Trini’s ears, a yellow beanie pulled low over her forehead. “I could say the same thing.”

Trini blocks her halfway there, catching at her wrist with careful fingers, pulling her hand close against her chest. “Watch it, Hart.”

Kimberly would say it started here: with her hand against Trini’s collarbone and Trini’s lips curled into that small, just so smile. Though the landscape is a portraiture in charcoal, a gray sky sweeping low over the horizon, ashen quarry rock stretching to meet it, Trini is a marvel of color.

There’s a faint blush clinging to the curve of her cheek now, and she drops Kimberly’s hand abruptly, letting her arm fall back to her side.

“Should we go without the boys?” Kimberly asks, just to dampen the silence. Trini nods quickly, turning away, and Kimberly risks a step closer to the sheer drop. “You first,” she says, peeking at Trini out of the corner of her eye.

Trini grins in response, smile tugging high at her cheeks. “No,” she draws the syllable long, teasing. “You first.”

Kimberly turns toward her, crossing her arms over her chest. “I think after the hell you put me through the first time, this one is on you.”

Trini turns toward her, mouth dropping in mock surprise. “The hell I put _you_ through? You pushed me off a cliff.”

Kimberly smirks and shifts toward her on reflex, “You have to admit, you deserved it.”

Trini narrows those pretty cat-eyes, eyebrows creasing. “Did I?”

Kimberly laughs, the noise loud in the soft post-dawn light. “You so did.”

“Okay,” Trini says, voice pitched low, “Maybe I did.” And then, suddenly, abruptly, she’s stepping impossibly close, her hands landing on Kimberly’s hips, her head knocking into Kimberly’s airspace. Kimberly feels her breath catch high in her throat, oxygen suddenly in a very limited and rare supply.

Trini ducks in close and Kimberly finds herself entirely fixated on the pursed, pout of her lips, the sheen of her lip-gloss.

Kimberly thinks of Jason, broad shouldered and strong, of the flirtations that came before, of their hands pressing fingerprints against the column of her throat, the round of her breasts.

Suddenly, she wants nothing more than Trini’s hands to follow that familiar path, wants to unravel the secrets written on the cards that Trini holds hopelessly close to her chest. She wants Trini pressed hard against her in the backseat of her beat-up, off-white Subaru.

She wants to taste her.

And oh God. She has it way worse than she thought.

“But,” Trini says, “You deserve it, too.”

It takes Kimberly a second to pull back to reality, head reeling and oxygen deprived. By then, it’s too late.

Trini wraps her hands around Kimberly shoulders and bodily throws them both over the edge of the ravine. Kimberly barely has time to scream.

They hit the water still interlocked, and Kimberly shoves away from Trini forcefully, kicking toward the surface. Trini breaks through the water laughing, sputtering water on her exhales. Kimberly feels a flush of shame, face rushing with heady embarrassment. She can’t believe she was ever so fucking stupid.

She slaps a wave of water at Trini, face creased in a scowl. “You asshole.”

Trini shrugs, treading lazily. “You should have seen your fucking face.” She looks at Kimberly and busts out laughing again. “You should honestly see it now, too.”

Kimberly’s response is interrupted by a howl at the top of the cliffs, whooping laughs ringing clear. The boys are here. Because of course.

Trini smirks, reaching out to cup at Kimberly’s chin, smoothing the line that mars her face with a careful thumb. “Fair is fair, Kim.” Then she ducks in, pressing a kiss to the apple of Kimberly’s cheek, pulling away quickly. “Race you.”

She leaves Kimberly breathless and waterlogged at the bottom of the cliff. Kimberly stays there for a moment more before she follows, the boys close at her heels.

Trini wins. But it’s close.

**

If you ask Trini, it started at twilight.

She dozed off doing homework, books strewn across the bed, pencil still clenched tight in her fist. She pulls free from sleep in a dusk-drenched room, head groggy and eyes heavy. They snap open when she sees the reason she woke: Kimberly Hart, crouched lithe and long on her windowsill.

Kimberly grins when Trini spots her, tilting her head to the side, hair falling in a painfully appealing sweep across her eyes. “Gonna invite me in?”

Trini grumbles, shuffling up onto her forearms, squinting blearily at the window. She must be dreaming.

“Why? Are you a vampire now?”

Kimberly laughs, this low husky thing. “No, just polite.”

Trini shakes her hair free from her face, clearing her throat, trying to regain some semblance of the upper hand. “You know, traditionally people knock.” She glares. “Or text.”

Kimberly lowers herself from the sill though Trini doesn’t remember inviting her in. She eyes Trini’s room curiously, from the un-painted drywall to the broken plaster, still piled in the corner. Trini stifles embarrassment at the bra hanging on her bedpost, her brother’s toys laboring across the carpet.

“I did text.” She tilts an eyebrow in Trini’s direction. “Check your phone, dork.”

Trini mumbles under her breath, scrabbling in the comforter until she finds her phone. It’s dead, the anguished empty battery flickering on the black screen, and she chucks it half-heartedly in Kimberly’s direction. Kimberly catches it easily, turning it in her palms gingerly.

“You should charge it, we might have had an emergency.”

Trini glares. “Did you?”

For the first time Kimberly looks uncertain, pulling her bottom lip into her mouth, digging her teeth into the plush of her lip. “No.”

The strangeness of it hits Trini all at once. Kimberly Hart, former cheerleader-mean-girl-extraordinaire and, coincidentally, the hottest girl Trini has ever seen, is standing uninvited in the middle of her bedroom in sinfully short running shorts and a pink tank. Kimberly bends, grabbing one of Trini’s brother’s toys and standing with a smirk. It’s a plastic pink ranger, clutched tight in her palm, and she waves it in the air playfully.

“Looks like you wanted me in your room after all.”

Trini chucks a pillow in her direction. Kimberly doesn’t bother to catch it, just dodges out of the way, still grinning.

“The twins have all of them,” Trini says, creasing her brow in a frown, “And I’ll have you know that Yellow is Jackson’s favorite.”

“Yeah,” Kimberly says quietly, “mine, too.”

She drops the phone and the toy to the floor, shuffling closer to Trini’s recline. She hesitates before she gets on the bed, looking for permission. Trini nods slowly, carefully, and Kimberly sits on the bed before rising onto her knees. Trini’s eyes flash wide and she hefts herself higher on her forearms.

“Who is your favorite?” Kimberly asks, and then she’s moving closer, straddling Trini’s thighs easily, one hand pressing at the center of her chest until Trini falls back into her pillows.

Trini can feel her chest heaving, heart thundering, desperate and aching. Electricity runs, static-sharp and bright, through her veins. Kimberly’s steady, dark gaze breaks her open and Trini thinks she can have everything she finds.

“What are you doing?” she says, more a whisper than anything, words clinging to her lips like a prayer.

Kimberly shakes her head, careless and messy, eyes blinking wide. She wets her lips with her tongue, eyes fixed at Trini’s mouth. “I’m thinking about kissing you.”

Trini’s face crumples in confusion and she balls her hands at her side. “Why?”

Kimberly shrugs, laughs, shoulders rising and falling hopelessly. “I have no idea.” She tilts closer, hands moving to cup at Trini’s cheeks, her palms cold against Trini’s overheated face. “I can’t get you out of my head. Literally. Even when we aren’t at training I can—”

“Feel you,” Trini says, cutting her off, “Yeah, I know. It’s is happening to me, too.”

Kimberly shifts on top of her and Trini can feel the solid warmth of her thighs against her own. Her shorts drag at Trini’s skin and it feels so painfully intimate she has to clench her legs tight, remembering to breathe before the friction makes her explode.

“Do you think the boys feel it, too?” Kimberly asks. Her voice has pitched into a whine and Trini realizes it is killing her, killing her to not have the answer, to not know how to make it go away.

Trini swallows hard. “I hope not.”

Kimberly sits back up, removing her hands from Trini’s face to press them hard against her own forehead, massaging at her temples like she can force the tension from her skin.

Trini knows it won’t work. She’s tried pretty much everything to get the thoughts to go away, to get the sound and smell of Kimberly out of her head.

It’s the worst at practice when she is nearby, stripped down to a sports bra and spanx, sweat-drenched and looking at Trini with that sideways, cocky grin. It’s the worst after they drag themselves out of the pooled water in the ravine, clothes clinging to sun-browned skin, to every ripple of muscle and every curve. It’s the worst when they spar, rapid strikes pressing bruises into the soft skin of Trini’s cheeks, her thighs.

She’s tried mediation, hard rock blaring loud through tinny headphones while she breathes deep on the quarry ridge. She’s tried distracting herself with exercise and training, pushing Zach until he is breathless and angry. She’s tried easing the ache under the cover of midnight darkness, hands slipping below soft sleep-shorts, eyes shut tight against the shame of this empty house.

Kimberly’s eyes are wild now, raking her hair out of her eyes with one hand, the weight of her body pressing hard at Trini’s hips.

“What do we do?”

Trini shrugs, playing at dismissive, unaffected. She catches Kimberly’s narrowed glare and knows it isn’t working.

“We could talk to Zordon?” Trini says, voice tipping into a question. Kimberly is pulling a face before Trini can even finish.

“Yeah, no. I really don’t want to talk about the fact that I am having inappropriate thoughts about one of my Ranger teammates with the giant disembodied head on the wall, thanks.”

Trini arches an eyebrow. “Inappropriate thoughts?”

Kimberly pinches at her side, annoyed. “Shut up, you ass. You basically admitted you are having them, too.”

Trini wriggles back up onto her forearms, catching Kimberly off balance. She centers herself with a tight grip on Trini’s shoulders, bringing them closer than before. She can feel Kimberly’s breath stuttering warm against her lips.

Trini hesitates, debating the consequences of what she says next. The room has been swallowed by inky shadow, swathes of darkness cradling the girls in a careful embrace. It feels otherworldly, fantastical, an oasis from concepts like high school and endangered planets and repercussions.

“So kiss me.”

Trini would say it started here: with Kimberly stooping to meet her, loose hair tickling Trini’s cheeks, her hands curled at her shoulders. It starts with Kimberly licking wet into her mouth, mewling soft as Trini shifts underneath her, thigh fitting between Kimberly’s parted legs.

It starts here: in the dark just after twilight, aching and electric and inevitable.

**

Kimberly moves to leave at the sound of a whining garage door, headlights washing the side of the house in a watery light. Trini catches at her elbows, pulling her back for a last kiss, teeth knocking and noses pressed tight.

Trini stops Kimberly as she crouches in the open window. She looks back over her shoulder, ethereal and kiss-bruised.

Trini thinks of her parents, now unlocking the front door, thinks of her mother’s broken words, of the size of this town and the shame rooted deep in her gut.

“No one can know,” she says. Her voice sounds harsh, even to her.

Kimberly nods slowly, her face unreadable. “No one will know.”

She’s gone before Trini can explain and her apologies die on her lips.

**

Kimberly can feel Trini’s gaze on her all bio.

But every time she looks back, Trini is staring steadfastly away, nose buried in a beaten paperback she has propped under the lip of her desk. Kimberly furrows her brow in a frown, turning to face front before she suffers another chastisement from the teacher.

She tries to focus on taking notes, but her mind skips too fast to process the lecture. Symbiosis blurs in favor of the way Trini writhed beneath her last Friday night, all wide-eyed innocence and tempered bite, the way she keened, breathless, when Kimberly sucked over her pulse. She focuses back on the board, scrawling down definitions before she snaps the corner off of another desk.

They haven’t talked since the kiss. At least, not directly. And it would seem Trini likes it that way.

Kimberly chances another glance back and this time she catches Trini looking.

She makes up her mind.

**

In the many, many fantasies Trini has had about Kimberly Hart, none of them involved the third floor utility closet.

But. She isn’t picky.

Kimberly has her hand at Trini’s collar, the fabric wrapped so tight around her fist it’s a wonder Trini isn’t choking. She dragged her here after bio, smoldering and feral, stormed her up to two flights of stairs and sealed them in the damp Clorox-scented dark.

“Is this the part where you take my lunch money?” Trini drawls, wrenching free from Kimberly’s grasp, “Because I think I would rather skip right to the wedgies.”

Kimberly’s scowl deepens, and she prods a finger in Trini’s face, centimeters from her nose. “You can’t just ignore me.”

Trini bats her hand out of her face. “Who says?”

Kimberly throws her hands in the air, uprooting three mops and a moth-eaten Swiffer. “Says, like, our primeval galactic duty.” She pouts and _God_ that’s far worse than the glare. “We’re a team.”

Trini ducks her head, burying her hands in her pockets. “Okay.”

Kimberly deflates. “Okay?”

Trini shrugs, feeling guilt settle low in her stomach. “Yeah, okay. I shouldn’t have been such a little bitch about stuff.”

Kimberly looks surprised, but pleased too, and Trini wants to bite the smug smile off of her lips.

“Well,” Kimberly says, drawing the word long, “I’m glad we have that sorted.” She casts a glance around the small space and her smile shifts, sharpens. When she looks at Trini her eyes are half-lidded, pupils wide and dark. “This place brings back memories.”

Trini pulls a face, hating the jealousy that joins the guilt in her stomach, bitter as bile. “Gross.”

There is a beat of silence, transient, before Kimberly moves to cup her chin. She runs a thumb light over Trini’s bottom lip and she feels the touch thrum warm in her stomach, pulsing low between her legs.

“I want to kiss you,” Kimberly says, direct, certain, and this, more likely than any alien threat, is going to be the way Trini Kwan dies.

She can’t even bear to look at her, just closes her eyes, tilts her head up, and waits. The first kiss is soft, a barely-there brush, perfectly aligned. Kimberly nudges in a little harder, the tip of her tongue pressing like wet velvet at Trini’s bottom lip.

She caves, _God_ , she caves.

Trini opens her mouth to her in an easy, pitiful surrender, sighing soft as Kimberly laps into her mouth, sucking light at her tongue. Kimberly hooks her fingers in Trini’s belt loops, backing her into the door. Trini’s hips collide against the thin wood with a muted thud and she whines, kissing back hard, desperate to stoke the coal-hot throb that slicks between her legs.

Kimberly pulls back in increments, moving her lips in sloppy kisses across Trini’s jaw, dragging her teeth at the shell of Trini’s ear. “Do you want this?”

Trini scrabbles her fingers at the collar of Kimberly’s shirt, hooks her finger in the fabric, nodding desperately, chest heaving. “I want this.”

For a little while, Kimberly’s perfume drowns out the smell of bleach and the echoing cavern of empty school hallways. Trini finds a spot below Kimberly’s jaw that makes her shiver and she smiles, wolf sharp and pleased, against Kimberly’s skin and it’s enough.

**

Kimberly sprawls with Jason on the quad, absently picking sweet-smelling spring grass and stacking it on his knee. He lets her, lazy and compliant, head pillowed on his arms.

“Pass me my sandwich,” he says, squinting at her stoop by his legs, “I can’t reach.”

Kimberly smiles easily, “Nope.”

Jason grumbles but doesn’t get up, just kicks at her absently, not hard enough to upset the grass she has piled on his jeans. Jason tilts his head back in his recline, finding Zach approaching from the East wing, weaving through high schooler strewn picnic benches, paper lunch sack clutched loose in his hand.

“Zach,” Jason calls, low and friendly, “Pass me my sandwich?”

Zach chortles, sliding into the grass next to Kimberly, chucking her shoulder with a closed fist. “Get it yourself, big man.”

Jason groans, lips pulling into a pout. “Why do you guys always do this to me?”

Billy emerges from the cafeteria, lunch tray balanced in his hands. Jason brightens, lifting up his head. “Hey, dude.”

Billy settles at Kimberly’s other side and, without being asked, snags Jason’s sandwich and tosses it to his waiting hands. Jason smirks, smug.

Kimberly shakes her head and brushes the grass off of Jason’s leg, squeezing at his knee until he shakes her free. “Training tonight?”

Jason answers, mouth full. “Not tonight. I have a dinner with my dad.”

Zach groans victoriously, “Thank _fuck_.”

Trini wanders up thirty minutes into lunch period, thumbs hooked in her backpack straps, looking pointedly dismissive. Kimberly wonders how much time she spends in front of the mirror practicing that trite pout.

It’s cute. Almost.

“Where you been, crazy girl?” Zach asks, “Still acting like you have other friends?”

Trini emphatically ignores him, leaning toward Billy to knock his fist with her own, offering him a smile. “What’s for lunch, man?”

Billy pulls a face, “Fish sticks.”

Trini sticks out her tongue, “Rank.”

Trini drops her backpack to the grass and moves to sit down, intercepted by Zach who grabs her by the waist, pulling her into his lap. She shrieks a laugh despite herself, cheeks dimpling, and Kimberly realizes with a rush of jealousy that might be the first time she’s ever heard Trini laugh outside training.

She chokes it down because they can’t be anything, they aren’t anything, and it’s fine if Trini is pushing into Zach’s shoulder and it’s fine if his hands are on her waist and it’s really just fine.

Trini ducks into his shoulder, whispers something, and his eyes crinkle in a laugh. But then she is pushing away, shoving hard off his chest playfully, and he lets her go, falling back into the grass with a smile.

Trini hesitates, deciding where to sit among the clustered group. Kimberly reaches out her hand, half-unsure, surprised when Trini takes it. She tugs her slowly toward her and Trini settles into her lap, Kimberly’s arms hooked around her waist like a safety belt, nose at the nape of her neck.

Kimberly’s chest presses tight against Trini’s back, the weight of her a solid comfort against her thighs. Kimberly can feel her breathe, the expansion and contraction of her lungs, and she thrills at the animal heat of it.

Trini squirms exaggeratedly, shooting Zach a narrow-eyed look. “This is better,” she says, “Zach smells like boy.”

Jason laughs loud, almost choking on his sandwich. Billy, watching him, joins in. Zach closes his eyes, still smiling as he presses back into the grass. “Whatever, Dee-dee, we all know she’s more your type anyway.”

Trini stiffens, briefly, and Kimberly pretends not to notice.

Trini smells like sticky summer heat and Coppertone, her skin sunbaked and warm. Kimberly hooks her chin at Trini’s shoulder, stroking her thumb in circles below her navel.

“You smell like sunblock,” she murmurs, lips tilting into her neck. Trini shivers at the vibrations, settling her weight more firmly in Kimberly’s lap.

“My mom slathers it on us every morning.”

Kimberly laughs, low and bright, and Trini cranes her neck to shoot her a glare.

“It’s more for the twins,” she insists, “I just get caught in the crossfire.”

“Okay,” Kimberly says, “Whatever you say.”

Trini grumbles but doesn’t move to leave and Kimberly counts it as a victory.

In the sun-dappled shade outside their school, surrounded by her four closest friends, Kimberly presses a soft kiss at the crux of Trini’s neck and she doesn’t pull away.

**

Trini can feel her smoldering, even from five miles away.

Trini stands, her little brother hanging from her back, and tilts her head toward the window, listening. She squints out at the suburb. Beyond the pristine patches of mowed lawn and the matchbox grid of two story houses, she can sense Kimberly across town in her sprawling country estate.

She’s upset, roiling, and Trini can feel the heady thrum of her energy low in her chest. Jackson is whining, pulling at her hair, but she brushes him off, closing her eyes, trying to concentrate.

Kimberly isn’t in any real danger, that much Trini can tell. She knows how real crisis feels, the high, fluttering panic that rockets to her gut when any of her team has been truly threatened since their first morph.

Billy calls it their “Spidey sense” and she loves him for it.

But this is different: it’s echoes of distress, the remembrance of it more than the thing itself.

Kimberly is having a nightmare.

Trini fishes her cellphone from her pocket and Dante sits up from his slouch on the plush living room rug.

“Who are you calling?” he asks, reaching to tug at Trini’s pants, voice plaintive and high.

“None of your business,” she says, scrolling through her contacts, and Jackson laughs, still clinging round her neck.

He tries to see the screen over her shoulder and she tilts it away, hiding Kimberly’s contact photo from view. It’s one Kimberly snapped of the two of them during lunch, their faces pressed close, cheeks aligned.

It makes Trini feel a particular kind of lightheaded panic and she’s trying not to think about it.

Between utility closet trysts and late-night make outs after practice, she’s found herself doing a lot of that lately.

She presses the call button and brings the phone to her ear, trying to shake Jackson off of her back so she can concentrate. He only laughs louder and Dante joins in, latching onto her leg, tripping up her nervous pacing.

“For the love of—” Trini glares down at him, “get the freaking eff off of my—”

“Off your what?” Trini hears from the other end of the line, sleep hoarse and groggy.

“Oh shit,” Trini says, “Sorry I was—” she pauses again, looking down, voice turning sharp, serious. “I mean it guys, get off.”

They take one look at her face and sprint off at a scramble, Jackson dropping from her back and tripping over Dante as he peels around the corner of the living room.

Trini hears a sharp exhale over the line, and the creak of bedsprings. Kimberly’s voice in her ear makes her shiver. “Do you wake me up just to yell at me, Trin?”

Trini laughs, soft, and look back out the window. “No actually I—” A pause. What does she want? She can’t say she called her to wake her up from a nightmare, she would sound insane. She searches desperately for any excuse, the silence drawing long.

“Is this a booty call?”

Trini laughs again, too loud this time, forced, cheeks flushing red. “I was going to ask if you wanted to come over for dinner.”

Kimberly’s voice curls with interest, syllables rising high. “Really?”

Trini shuts her eyes tight, thumping at her forehead with one palm. “Of course.”

“I would love to.”

“Great,” Trini says, “I’ll tell my mom. Try to use the front door this time.”

She hangs up, the sound of Kimberly’s laugh still ringing in her ears.

**

Two little boys answer Trini’s front door, swinging it open a crack, their heads poking around the frame. Kimberly smooths her hands down the front of dress, a nervous habit, and tilts her head.

“Is Trini home?”

The boys don’t answer, they just stare. One of them blinks wide up at her and she tries for a smile. His face turns a dangerous red, and he punches at the other. From inside the house she can hear someone descending the stairs in loud stomps and then—

“Jackson, Dante I told you not to open the door.” There’s Trini, wrenching the door out of their grip, towering over them, frown firmly in place. She jerks her head in a nod at Kimberly, before turning her attention to one of the boys now pulling at her arm.

“What, J?”

He beckons for her to lean down and, after rolling her eyes at them for Kimberly’s benefit, she stoops. He curls his hand around her ear, whispering something in rapid Spanish before taking off into the house, the other boy close behind.

Trini rises, grinning now, canines showing at the corner of a candy-sweet smile. “He said you were pretty,” she says laughing. She reaches out to tug Kimberly over the threshold, eyeing her dress. Her eyes get stuck at Kimberly’s cleavage and she tugs her bottom lip into her mouth, biting down hard. Kimberly feels a rush of heat at the attention. She has to stop herself from replacing Trini’s teeth with her tongue, squeezing Trini’s hand tight instead.

“What do you think?” Kimberly asks, watching Trini focus pointedly on her eyes.

“I agree,” she says, blinking slow, eyelashes brushing her cheek.

Trini lets go of her hand, leaning against the ornamented banister of the foyer staircase. Kimberly thrills at the brash scrawl of her, an alien fixture among the sterling silver sconces and cream wallpaper. Skin shows in patches through the ripped knees of her jeans, a piercing flashing below the high hem of her crop top. Kimberly itches to touch and knots her hands behind her back instead, risking a small step forward.

“Are you gonna give me a tour?”

Trini tilts toward her unconsciously, eyes dropping to her lips, one hand moving to trace at the strap of Kimberly’s dress. “Dinner and a tour? Careful, you’re starting to sound needy.”

Kimberly narrows her eyes. “Watch your mouth, Trini Kwan, or I’ll stop holding back during our spars.”

Kimberly can feel the electric shock of energy that bites through Trini’s system, watches her face harden, brow pulling tight. “Don’t test me, Kimmy.”

“Why? Can’t handle it?”

Trini’s jaw jumps, muscles flexing taught in her forearms, lips pressed tight. Kimberly expects Trini to challenge her to a sparring match next practice, or a Zord race when Alpha 5 and Jason aren’t around. She even half-expects Trini to put a fist through the porcelain vase by the door. What she doesn’t expect is—

“I really wish I could kiss you right now.”

Kimberly pulls back, her voice dipping small, young. “Yeah?”

Trini nods, eyes large and soft, chin tilting up to meet Kimberly’s gaze. “Yeah.”

Kimberly reaches out, circling her fingers at Trini’s wrist, pulls her until she stumbles forward, closing the space between them. She strokes fragile at the hummingbird-thrum of Trini’s pulse, nudges closer, noses almost touching.

“So kiss me.”

There’s a clatter from the kitchen, china rattling on stone counters, and Trini flinches away, jumping back into the banister hard enough that Kimberly hears the wood splinter. Trini looks at her like a deer caught mid-flight, panicked and poised to run.

“Trini?” comes the voice from the kitchen, footsteps clicking closer, “Is your friend here?”

Trini looks at Kimberly, flitting and nervous, before she turns to the doorway, arms crossing over her chest. “Yeah, mom. We’re in the front room.”

So Mrs. Kwan isn’t what Kimberly’s expected.

She’s tall and slim, hair falling in a dark sheet over one shoulder with high-arched pouty lips and a dramatic, tilting brow. She stops in the doorway to the kitchen, wiping water off of her hands with a dishtowel. Despite herself, Kimberly’s palms are sweating.

“Oh,” Mrs. Kwan says, lips parting when she sees Kimberly. Kimberly knows she is a picture of obedience, dressed in a pink dress with a modest hemline and classic design, hair tamed by a thin headband, and Mrs. Kwan smiles. “Hi there.”

Apparently she isn’t what Mrs. Kwan was expecting either.

Kimberly steps forward before Trini can introduce them, holding out her hand. “I’m Kimberly, It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

**

Kimberly keeps her hand on Trini’s thigh the entire meal, tracing circles over thin denim, scratching her nails over the fabric and watching Trini’s ears flare red. Kimberly pinches Trini’s leg as a penalty for every snarky comment while Trini laughs in protest, looking caught and affectionate and young.

Afterward, Trini walks Kimberly to her car and, under the cover of a lightning-bug-lit cul-de-sac night, Kimberly pins her against the passenger side door and kisses her neck until the skin is mottled with strawberry-red bites.

**

Jason is at the grill, bare-chested and broad-shouldered, wielding a spatula in one hand, a watchful eye on the ground meat.

Kimberly walks up behind him and puts her hands on his shoulders, tilting onto tiptoe to see the burgers. “God,” she laughs, “You are such a dad.”

He grins, sloppy and wide, turning his head to rest his brow at her temple. “What?”

She turns her smile to meet his grin, pinching at his shoulder. “At the grill making burgers, I mean.” She rolls back onto the soles of her feet, jostling him with her shoulder. “All that’s missing is an apron and your ‘50s era wife.”

He shrugs, gesturing at the pool with his spatula. “It’s a pool cookout, Kim, there’s gotta be burgers.”

She laughs. “Agreed.”

He swats at her with the flat of the spatula. “I should thank you again for letting us crash your pool.”

“Oh my god, that’s like the fifth time you’ve thanked me,” she laughs and turns to walk away, only pausing to shout “such a dad!” over her shoulder.

She finds Trini at the poolside, eyes closed, resting back on her forearms, her feet dangling in the lucid blue water. Kimberly hesitates before sitting next to her, settling onto the pool deck of aggregate stone, pressing close enough to feel Trini’s heat. Trini doesn’t open her eyes, but scoffs when Kimberly sits, the corner of her mouth turning into a sneer.

“Planning your impending nuptials to our benevolent leader?”

Kimberly hums in response, tilting sideways to press her shoulder against Trini’s. “Jealous, cutie?”

Trini does open her eyes at this, squints at her to combat the harsh noon-day sun. “Maybe.”

Kimberly ducks in close, brushing her nose at Trini’s cheek, pressing close enough to smell the sharp notes of her tangerine facewash, the fruity musk of her shampoo. “Well you don’t have to be.”

She nuzzles into Trini’s hairline, her neck, the burnished sun-soaked heat of Trini’s skin licking through her ribs, burning like whisky in her stomach, a low, simmering ache.

Trini whines but doesn’t pull away, just tilts closer until their bare sides and shoulders and thighs are all aligned. “You should stop,” Trini says, low, rough. Her head lolls back, neck relaxed, hair falling in a dark sheen behind her.

Kimberly smiles against the skin of her shoulder, head ducked low. “Why? Can’t handle it?”

Kimberly checks to make sure the boys are otherwise occupied—Jason at the grill, Billy drifting weightlessly in the deep end, and Zach poised on the diving board—before she puckers her lips, dragging a kiss from the hard line of Trini’s jaw to the dip in her collarbone. She laps her tongue once, tasting sweat and chlorine, bites down lightly over her throat.

“Fuck,” Trini says, teeth gritted, legs splaying open wider at the pool’s edge, “I’m—”

Kimberly presses another kiss below her ear. “Maybe you need to cool off.”

Trini’s eyes flash open, alarmed. “If you push me into the pool right now, Kimberly Hart, I swear I will drown.”

Kimberly laughs, loud enough to draw Zach’s attention. She shifts away incrementally, trying not to spook Trini. “I make you forget how to swim?” she says, “Romantic.” Kimberly pauses, eyeing the boys carefully before she leans in close to Trini’s ear. “Wanna see my room?”

**

Trini’s got her pinned against the door, kissing her messy and deep, Kimberly’s bikini top skewed to the side. Trini’s hands are covering her chest instead, massaging her carefully, thumbing over her nipples.

Kimberly splays her hands across Trini’s bare back, fingers dimpling her skin. She moves to cup at the back of Trini’s thighs, urging her to straddle her leg. Kimberly can feel her slick through her bikini bottom and moans into her mouth, coaxing her into a slow grind.

Trini keens, the kiss stalling as her mouth falls open, staccato breaths punctuating the space between their lips.

“Is this okay?” Kimberly says, so high pitched and breathy she hardly recognizes her voice. Trini nods desperately, pressing in again, nipping at Kimberly’s bottom lip.

“Jesus, yes.”

Jason’s voice reaches them like a bucket of cold water, a distant echo from downstairs. “Uh, guys? We need a fourth for our game of chicken?” A pause. “This has been a very long bikini malfunction.”

Trini bites hard at her own palm and Kimberly can’t tell if she’s trying to restrain a groan or a laugh. Kimberly lets her head fall back against her bedroom door with a muted thud, and calls back.

“It was urgent you asshole, we’ll be down in a second!” She adjusts her bikini and straightens, cupping Trini’s face in her palms. “You good?”

Trini pouts, turning her face to press a kiss against Kimberly’s palm. “I’m considering murdering Jason but besides that.”

Kimberly laughs, opening her door and taking Trini’s hand, tugging toward the stairs. “I’ll help.”

**

Trini and Kimberly absolutely destroy the boys at chicken and no one mentions the line of hickeys blossoming across Kimberly’s chest.

**

Jason burns the burgers but they eat them anyway, smothered in ketchup and mustard and tasting faintly like chlorine. The sun is setting now, casting golden ripples across the surface of the pool, the rays shimmering into translucence as a breeze stirs the waters.

They all pile on the grass, water-worn and drowsy, watching the sky twist and darken over the picturesque, gabled sweep of Angel Grove. Trini wipes a smudge of ketchup from the corner of Kimberly’s mouth before coaxing her head onto her stomach, hooking her fingers around Jason’s palm.

They lay in silence, listening to the town breathe, the expanse, the grid, as much a part of them as blood and sinew and bone. Trini feels a warmth settle in her chest, gilded and still, a sense of belonging, found pillowed under the old, broad-branched elm in Kimberly Hart’s backyard.

Trini wants to tell them that she loves them, wants to explain what all this means to her: that she has never felt more like herself than she does now. That for the first time in her life, through countless schools and homes and towns, she has finally found somewhere she wants to stay.

The words won’t come, like gems lodged in stubborn quarry rock, they stick fast in her throat, a declaration for another day. She settles for something easier, sifting her free hand through Kimberly’s hair absently to give her the strength.

“You guys,” she says, startling away the silence, “I really love it here.”

Billy hums his assent, reaching out to tug at a lock of her hair. Zack grins, stretching over Billy to pinch at her cheek. Jason turns his head, pressing a kiss to her temple, and Kimberly just smiles, catching at the hand that cards through her hair.

“We know, Trini,” Billy finally says. “Us too.”

They lay there until the sun goes down, and then a little bit longer, just because.

**

Kimberly makes a habit of coming to Friday night dinners, roughhousing with the boys after dessert and helping Trini’s mom with the dishes, buried elbow deep in soapsuds at the kitchen sink while Trini dries.

They go up to Trini’s bedroom after, splay on her rug and do homework, swapping answers and laughing over the hideously outdated bio textbook. Sometimes they just kiss, lazy and long and patient, mouthing over necks and chests, kissing soft at wrists and foreheads and cheeks.

Kimberly leaves before it gets dark, saying bye to Mrs. and Mr. Kwan and the twins on the way out.

Later, in a few days or weeks or months, Trini will take her hand in the hallway after bio and press a kiss to the dimple of her cheek when she drops Kimberly off at calculus. Jason will ban them from sparring at training, saying it turns too explicit for even an omniscient, ageless disembodied head who has presumably seen everything anyway.

But for now she stops by her beat-up Subaru in the driveway and looks back, finds Trini leaning out her bedroom window watching, and blows her a kiss.

And it’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> come talk to me at nevervalentines.tumblr.com about kimberly hart's jawline


End file.
